The second round of the SRAM Singletrack Mind Series was held on Sunday 16 May 2010, at Coondoo Road track, located just outside Nowra.
A crystal clear day greeted over 340 riders to the 8 hour endurance race format, with approximately 80 solo riders and 91 teams competing.
I was well under prepared for this race, as prior to the race I was battling a cold and was unsure if I would be well enough to go the full eight hours. After much deliberation, I made the call late Saturday afternoon to harden up and head down to Nowra for the race.
I had heard lots of awesome reviews about the Nowra course and found the first lap was a pleasant learning curve. The 10.5km course lived up to the hype, with smooth, fast following sections, log rollovers and pinch climbs spread evenly throughout course. South Coast United Mountanbiker’s (SCUM) put together a really good blend of high quality single trail and fire road for this event.
The gifted mechanics at Bike Bug North Sydney had tuned my weapon of choice, a Merida FLX Hardtail, which was perfectly suited to the fast flowing course.
The game plan for this race was to settle into the race for the first couple of laps and pace off the leaders as much as possible. Upon completion of the first lap, I had managed unknowingly to get myself into 3rd position and kept 2nd placed within sight for the first 5 laps. By midway through lap 6, I secured second place and was feeling strong.
First place was approximately 5 minutes head at this stage and was recording constantly strong lap times. I planned to try and maintain consistent 30min lap times and reassess how I was feeling at the mid way point. By lap 8 (4 hours) I was still feeling strong and decided to try and chase down 1st place.
I managed to pull back approximately 3 minutes on lap nine, but the following laps were considerably slower and any margin I had gained soon disappeared.
With the end in sight (1.5 hours remaining), I tried to pick the pace up along the back fire road and awkwardly hit an off chambered rut, which somehow caused a spoke to snap. My wheel was instantly buckled and the remaining half of a lap was completed very sheepishly.
Upon my return through the race transition, there was 45 minutes of racing left. I quickly arranged for my wonderful wife, Samantha (a.k.a support crew) to grab a spare wheel from the car and arrange for a tube and tire to be fitted to the wheel (excellent example of good preparation, Not!).
Meanwhile, I took a gamble that my wheel would hold up for another lap to try and maintain the small gap back to third place, who was creeping ever closer. Cornering was horrible and descending was sketchy to say the least, but the wheel held up and I managed to hold a mere 3 minute lead over 3rd place going into the final lap.
A quick wheel change and fast final lap was required to secure a 2nd place, in 8 hours and 17 minutes with 168km of single track covered.
A special thanks to Bike Bug & Merida for an awesome bike and the race organisers for another wonderful event.
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